The article (judging from the sub-header) makes two separate points, one about the total amount of money raised in IPOs in a year, and the change in market value of those newly-public companies one year from the IPO date.

The first metric is shown by the size of the bubbles while the second metric is displayed as distances from the horizontal axis. (The second metric is further embedded, in a simplified, binary manner, in the colors of the bubbles.)

The designer has decided that the second metric - performance after IPO - to be more important. Therefore, it is much easier for readers to know how each annual cohort of IPOs has performed. The use of color to map to the second metric (and not the first) also helps to emphasize the second metric.

There are details on this chart that I admire. The general tidiness of it. The restraint on the gridlines, especially along the horizontal ones. The spatial balance. The annotation.

And ah, turning those bubbles into lollipops. Yummy! Those dotted lines allow readers to find the center of each bubble, which is where the values of the second metrics lie. Frequently, these bubble charts are presented without those guiding lines, and it is often hard to find the circles' anchors.

That leaves one inexplicable decision - why did they place two vertical gridlines in the middle of two arbitrary years?